Chargers' Mathews opens Door of Hope

Chargers running back Ryan Mathews (background), and his mom, Tricia Mathews (right), take Helen Bailey (left) and her daughter Tyler Elizabeth Woods, 8, on a shopping trip at a Target store in San Diego on Monday.
— Eduardo Contreras

Chargers running back Ryan Mathews (background), and his mom, Tricia Mathews (right), take Helen Bailey (left) and her daughter Tyler Elizabeth Woods, 8, on a shopping trip at a Target store in San Diego on Monday.
— Eduardo Contreras

And then Helen Bailey was off with her daughter to unpack a new life, slightly more comfortable thanks to a woman and her son who shared a similar past.

The four of them spent more than two hours together Monday morning traversing the Mission Valley Target store, shopping for items for Bailey’s new apartment (along with some little extras for Bailey’s daughter, Tyler).

Trish Mathews is a serious shopper. She and Bailey moved meticulously up one aisle and down another. Trish never slowed down. Helen never stopped smiling. Trish had advice about microwaves and bath mats, cutlery and blenders. Helen thanked Trish so often that Trish eventually stopped saying “You’re welcome.”

Tyler bounced from one side of the aisle to the other, filling the air with chatter that never ceased, the way only an 8-year-old girl can.

Behind them trailed Trish’s muscle-bound son, Ryan, a running back for the Chargers. He pushed a cart (actually 10 different carts, as each one was wheeled away by store personnel once it was full).

It is Ryan’s five-year, $25 million contract that allows him and Trish to give back in this way, with the shopping spree as a sort of launch for The Trish and Ryan Mathews Door of Hope Chest, run in conjunction with the Salvation Army.

It is remembering where he came from that compels him to do so.

At one time or another, almost every professional athlete is involved in charity work. Only rarely is it as personal as this is for Ryan.

He and his mom have come a long way from their days living in a car.

“I know my mom would have really appreciated something like this,” he said.

Much more impressive than the money Ryan spent Monday – let’s just say they passed the budgeted $1,000 with four stuffed carts to go – was the time he spent.

He is a man. This was shopping. It took two hours.

No more than 10 minutes in, Ryan had the look that any man on such a trip has. Glazed eyes. He would be jarred awake every few minutes by his mom saying, “Ryan, you got this?” as she pointed to a big box holding pots and pans or a vacuum.

He was there for the heavy lifting, literally. He was there, also, to lift the spirits of a girl he could relate to.

Toys were not in the budget, but about an hour into the excursion, Ryan rescued Tyler from the bed and bath department and walked her to the good stuff. For 10 minutes, the two of them filled a cart, mostly with dolls.

Remarkably, after less than 10 minutes, Tyler threw up her hands and exclaimed, “I’m done.”

“I know when I was little, I always wanted stuff,” Mathews said a while later. “Every time we’d go to the grocery story, I’d be over the toy aisle looking at the G.I. Joes, the Legos. We couldn’t afford that stuff.”

Bailey explained after the last items – a broom and mop – had been loaded into the last cart that she had been in her apartment for four weeks. That was after spending 10 months at the Salvation Army’s Door of Hope transitional living center for homeless women and children. Before that, she and Tyler spent 2½ years bouncing from shelter to shelter.

Bailey said she lost her job as an office manager for a small mortgage firm during the collapse of the financial industry in 2008. At that same time, she said, she had debilitating health issues discovered, and her relationship with Tyler’s father ended.

The Door of Hope, which provides services such as job counseling and parenting classes, helps women make the transition into their own apartments.

It was on her first trip to the facility that Trish Mathews found out the women leave the facility with what she considered little money for household needs. Trish wondered how they did it.

“That’s got to be where I fit in,” she recalled thinking. “I want to help women have a home. You can do without things. It’s just so much nicer to have them. … There were times there was no one to help me, and there were times I have gotten help.”

Her eyes filled.

“I just want them to know that somebody cares,” she said. “It’s hard in this world when you feel all alone and no one cares.”

A few minutes earlier, Bailey had put her hands to her face, the smile still spread across it and tears welling in her eyes.

“There is no way I could afford all this,” she said. “Every time I look at this stuff I will smile, knowing there is somebody who loved me enough to do this.”